Suspect Gets In Massive Shootout After Chase With Florida Police

It requires a truly selfish person to run from police, putting the lives of not only officers but innocent bystanders at risk. Then there’s this guy in Tampa, Florida who punched things up several notches. Not only did he engage in a high-speed pursuit on city streets before that he stabbed the mother of his children in front of the kids 13 times before stealing his brother’s AK-47 and driving off.

Low-speed police chase turns explosive in a hurry.

Sure enough, during the chase, 33-year-old Michael Bresnahan crashed into another vehicle with two innocent people inside. One was a mother of six children. The driver hopped out and was out of there in a hurry, but for whatever reason the woman didn’t escape before the shootout erupted. Bresnahan didn’t care about her, only about himself, opening fire on the police who had been trailing behind him all that time.

With no other option, officers had to return fire. You can see in the footage of the shootout the SUV Bresnahan was in as well as the car the mother of six was inside started looking like Swiss cheese in no time.

When the shooting died down, police were able to use a shield to advance and get the woman to safety. She seemed all too eager to get out of there, and who can blame her? In a TV interview afterward, the mother of six expressed her gratitude to police, saying she thought for sure she was going to get hit by at least one of the bullets and die. Thankfully, by some miracle, she got out of there unscathed.

Bresnahan was shot dead in the firefight. No officers were hit.

Before everything went down, the police chase wasn’t high-speed, although officers had trouble hitting the tire with Stop Sticks. It was the kind of pursuit we see people cry about calling off because it would do more harm than good. Those same people likely would pin the mother and other innocent bystander caught in the crossfire as a reckless action by police, not Bresnahan.

A man who’s willing to stab the mother of his children in front of his own kids can’t just be let go because, as the police chief said in a press conference, he constituted a public menace and danger to everyone. Thankfully, the woman he stabbed was transported to the hospital in critical condition but was listed as stable later, so hopefully she pulls through.